Around mid-morning, about 10 to 11 am.

Despite being the nerdy Ravenclaw that she was, Addison was rarely excited about an assignment. Typically, she would complete the assignments based on her perception of perfection and be done with it. The Ancient Runes project, which they would be presenting near the end of the month, was different. She was actually excited about the project, as she expressed in her actions to Professor Reid a few days earlier.[1] Plus, she had chosen to present her project on the runes used in the Hogwarts Portraits, which were some of her most favorite things in Hogwarts.

Due to her own enthusiasm, Addison didn't have too much research left to do. She only wanted to research a little more on the runes that produced the color changing property of the paintings. Other than that, her research was basically completed. Professor Reid had indicated that they could choose the way that they wanted to present their projects. Since she loved planning these types of activities out, she already planned on actually painting a couple of paintings, using the runes from her research, to produce the effects that she researched. Oh, and of course, she would paint the muggle way, just like how she completed just about everything.

Addison had woken up early on that Saturday, to paint using colored oils. It had actually been her first time using them. She even skipped breakfast that morning, to concentrate on layering the oils correctly. She had been able to recreate a picture of herself when she was younger on the canvas. In the process, however, she managed to splatter the paint on herself multiple times, in addition to the surrounding tables near her in the Ravenclaw Common Room. She had been able to clean up the paint from her surroundings, at the very least.

She kept the painting on one of the tables near her, in order to let it finish drying. She sat cross-legged on one of the chairs, holding the frame to the painting in her lap. Her notes were open in front of her and a knife was in her other hand. She sat there, looking through her notes for the specific runes etched into the frames that cause a painting to talk.

1.	Aileen and Addison

Yesterday had, for Alvis, been a long, weird day. Getting stuck in the body of your Slytherin compatriot would do that. Having thankfully returned to his own body by dinner time, he'd promptly gone to bed in attempt to let his unconscious mind sort itself out in his dreams. It hadn't worked. He still didn't want to think about it, though, so he'd spent the morning working on his own Runes project up in the fourth year boys' dorms.

As much time as Alvis took planning his various personal projects, it was the actual construction that he found the most enjoyable, being able to turn off his brain for a while and just focus on one thing. Before he knew it, he'd missed breakfast. It was almost 10:30, and the mold he'd been working on -- that of round amulet the size of scone, its edges raised into a secondary ring but its face otherwise flat -- was complete. But he couldn't do the metalworking in the dorms, since they didn't have access to the hearth. So, Alvis rolled up his tools, retrieved the canister of pewter from his trunk, and tucked the mold into his back pocket before heading down into the common room.

He came down the stairs with his arms full, finding the common room sparsely occupied as their housemates found places outside to work while enjoying the day. Alvis nodded to Addison in greeting and moved towards the fireplace, only to stop when he got there. Addison's painting sat on a table nearby, right on the edge of where the heat started to disperse. Alvis would have to stoke the fire even more to serve his purpose, and that made him worry.

"Um, Rockwell?" When he got her attention, Alvis pointed to the painting. "Is it safe to move this somewhere else? I'm going to be using the fire. It'll be hotter than this and I don't want to damage the oils."

Finding the right page in her notebook, Addison set it down on the table in front of her. She had to move the knife from her hand to the table, while she was searching. She would have hated to accidentally cut herself due to her lack of attention to what she was doing. She glanced at the runes that she had to carve into the frame for her painting to communicate. Ehwaz and mannaz together, which meant communicate people or communicate social relationships.[1]

Picking back up the knife, Addison stood up from her spot. Resting the frame on top of a table, so she wouldn't cut herself, she began carving ehwaz and mannaz into the frame just as she saw it on the Hogwarts paintings. She was able to take enough accurate notes, in order to replicate the design. While carving, she couldn't help but to hum a quiet tune. It would help to pass the time. After all, carving runes into anything was rather time consuming, even for someone that was rather enjoying the assignment, like her.

Addison had carved the runes along the top of the frame when Alvis came into the room. She had taken her eyes off of her work to nod back to Alvis, thankfully keeping her hand steady. The last thing that she needed, was to accidentally cut herself. But, she managed to continue carving the runes around to the next side as well.

While she was working, she heard Alvis speak up to her. Putting down the knife, she looked over at her fellow fourth year and saw him pointing to her oil painting. When he asked if it was alright to move her work, she finally noticed that her workspace seemed to have exponentially grown from the table that she was occupying before. Now, it seemed like it covered multiple tables, and the floor underneath them. She blushed when she noticed this. "Sorry! I seemed to have taken up way more space than I intended! I guess that I wasn't watching how much space I was using. I should probably move some of that ... Yes, Sorry, yes, it's fine to move," she babbled on. Taking out her wand, she levitated the painting off of the table that it was originally on, and moved it to one of the tables furthest away from the tables. "Is that for your project?" she asked, after looking back over at Alvis.

1.	Rune Meanings

"Ah, yes. Yes it." Alvis grinned sheepishly and knelt next to the hearth, laying the mold and his rolled toolkit on the floor. He donned his Potions gloves to protect against the heat before wedging the thermos-like container of pewter sheets into the center of the embers. He added a few more logs around it and set them alight with Incendio before giving Addison a slight grin. "An amulet like this should really be made of silver, but I'm not going to get that kind of heat here in the castle, so pewter will have to do."

He prodded the fire with a poker to keep it stoked and checked his watch. Fifteen minutes in the fire should do it. He settled in, cross-legged, and unrolled his toolkit within easy reach. With nothing else to do but wait, he craned his head to see what Addison was working on. A picture frame, it looked like. "You too?" he asked, nodding to the frame. "You're doing portraits, right? Like on the walls? How's that coming?"

Addison smiled and nodded to Alvis's answer. It was always a good thing to not be the only student working adamantly on their project. Turning back to the frame that she was just carving the runes in, she picked back up the knife and balanced the frame on a nearby table that was further away from the fireplace. She began carving the symbols into the frame, trying to carve accurate representations of the runes. Not taking her eyes off of the frame as she carved, she responded back to him, "Well, silver and pewter are both metals, so it shouldn't be too big of a difference."

Taking her eyes off of her work when Alvis asked her about the project, she smiled. "Yes, the project. It's the portraits on the wall. I actually just finished painting a smaller model of one," she gestured to the painting that she moved before. "It was kind of my first time with oil paints, as you could tell," gesturing to the paint splatter all over her. She had been relatively careless with the paint as well, but that was a piece of detail that she figured didn't need to be shared.

"Well, silver and pewter are both metals, so it shouldn't be too big of a difference."

Alvis choked at that and nearly dropped his tongs into the fire. "Shouldn't be -- it makes a huge difference! There's hundreds of different metals -- most of the periodic table, not to mention alloys and compounds -- and they all have completely different magical properties. The difference between silver and pewter could mean the difference between saving your life and getting your head blasted off!"

He realized with a start that the volume had jumped on his voice, not quite to the point of shouting but certainly louder than what could be considered acceptable inside the castle, especially when talking to a girl. His face flushed and he ducked his head. "Er...Sorry. It's, um. It's the family trade. Making things, I mean. I've been dabbling in it ever since I was a kid." He craned his head again to get another glance at the picture she'd made. "You did a good job on the painting, especially for a first time with unfamiliar materials."

Not expecting to cause Alvis to raise his voice, Addison jumped at the sudden spike in his pitch. The knife in her hand hit against the frame that she was working on, slicing into her finger. Ignoring the cut for the moment, she turned to Alvis, very surprised. "Right ... I, uh, haven't ... e-exactly st-studied i-into that y-yet," she stammered, off guard. During breaks from Hogwarts, she enjoyed studying the muggle subjects that she was missing from being at Hogwarts. She had been focusing entirely on mathematical topics, and figured that she would soon turn to the sciences, including Chemistry, which was clearly at the heart of the current conversation. Due to usually being careful to detail, and enjoyment in Potions, she still should've known that. It was a rather momentary lapse in judgement, that she never liked to admit.

Blushing, she shook her head at Alvis. "No need to be sorry, that was just me forgetting information. Oh, you invent things? They must be very interesting then," she commented. Being from an inventive family was clearly more interesting, then being from a muggle-born family, like her. Turning to her painting, she smiled briefly. "Thanks, it took a while too. It's actually of me when I was younger," she commented. Remembering her finger, which was now bleeding from her wound, she quickly grabbed a rag from her bag. Applying the rag to her finger, she attempted to stem the flow of blood.

"Inventing...yeah, I suppose that's a good way to put it." Alvis prodded the fire again, carefully arranging the burning logs so he'd get the optimal amount of heat focused on his enchanted canister. "I mean, I'm still learning so I tend to 'tinker' more than anyone else. And Gramps is pretty set in his ways -- he makes brooms and he's almost as picky as a wandmaker. But yeah, it's all about figuring out which details work together to produce the best results."

He glanced up again and noticed Addison wrapping a rag around her bleeding finger. He winced -- that'd be his fault too. "Ah, gee, Addison, I'm really sorry. I didn't mean to scare you into that. Here." He set the warm poker down and climbed to his feet, coming over to where Addison sat. He took his wand out of his back pocket and offered her his hand. "Let me see."

He leaned in for a closer look at the cut which, thankfully, wasn't too deep. The only Defense spells that Alvis had any talent in whatsoever was the healing charms. He brushed the cut twice with his wand and muttered, "Sano," a charm for minor wounds he remembered his father using often when he'd been a child. If he'd done it right, the broken skin would knit itself back together. "I'm sorry," he said again as the spell took hold. "I didn't mess up your carving, did I?"

Addison nodded to what Alvis told her. Inventing, or as he said tinkering, was still a rather interesting process. After all, just look at how far muggle inventions have come. Of course, muggle inventions didn't include magic, and therefore there were more endless opportunities for magical inventions. "Yeah, so it must be rather important for you to know how these different materials interact with each other," she responded. It sounded awfully like Potions, only that the tinkering didn't necessarily need to include mixing different potions or ingredients. It probably shouldn't have been such a surprise, then, that Alvis had elevated his voice at her before because of her mistake.

After wrapping her cut in the cloth, Addison hadn't been aware that Alvis had even seen her. It wasn't a major cut, and she could've stabbed herself much worse than that. If she wasn't prepared to make such a mistake, then she shouldn't be using a knife in the first place. There were spells that could have achieved the same effect. Just like with her painting, she would very much prefer the muggle way. Being a muggleborn, it was a more intuitive process for her. So, she was very much prepared to accidentally stab herself, just as she had been prepared to splatter paint on herself (just as she had did earlier). "It's fine - I'm fine, you don't need to worry about me," she attempted to reassure him. It didn't work, he came over anyway.

Reluctantly, Addison unwrapped her finger to show the wound at his request. He proceeded to use a healing charm on her. She hadn't focused on healing spells in her studies and readings. There was just so much knowledge, and such little time to try to understand it all. "Thanks," she muttered as she saw the skin knit itself back together. It was like muggle stitches, only that the skin healed itself back over with no need for the skin to be held together. "It's fine, you don't need to be sorry, I was the clumsy one," she tried to reassure him again. She glanced at the carving when he asked about messing it up. "Nothing that I can't make into a rune," she responded with a reassuring smile. If her work was ruined, she would've yelled at him right after it happened. So, nothing seriously major happened.